10/19/2022
While we are delayed in sharing the wonderful news from last week, we wanted to let all of our amazing supporters know that the Vermont Board of Libraries voted unanimously on another petition to change the name of Negro Brook in the Townshend State Forest to hereby be known as Huzzy Brook, after James and Susanna Huzzy.
We knew the right thing to do was to handoff this important (exhausting) and restorative work to an amazing group of locally based changemakers in Windham County. We couldn’t be more grateful for their tenacious and steadfast stewardship of this work.
The Windham County NAACP stood with us from the very beginning and their leadership was instrumental in this second round as well. We also want to thank Dr. Elise Guyette for all her research to uncover the long-forgotten story of this incredible and inspiring Black Americans, and Rich Holshuh in his official capacity representing the Elnu band of the Abenaki, for standing with us from the early days and for his gentle guidance and deep sense of community care.
We want to express our humblest gratitude to Wichie Artu, Stephanie Amyot, Lynne Shea, Juliette Carr, and Sarah Pugh, for their patient and successful work to reach this momentous shift and to the hundreds of Vermonters who have written in support, offered testimony, and signed the petitions. Vermont will soon say goodbye to its last known race-based place name, joining Hawaii as the second state to do so (we believe).
Lastly, we encourage people around the continent and world to continue the intentional work to deconstruct hundreds of years of geographic colonization through the removal of monuments, restoring place names of geographic features to those names held by the original inhabitants who have never ceded this land, and working intentionally to name and rename places and features after the people whose stories and accomplishments often went untold or were suppressed. We encourage all Vermonters to research and uplift BIPOC history in your community, especially as groups around the state and country attempt to remove stories from educational settings and materials.
With Solidarity and Admiration,
The Rename Negro Brook Alliance (now known as the Restorative Remapping Project)
The Vermont State Board of Libraries last week unanimously approved renaming Negro Brook in Windham County to Huzzy Brook. The brook, which runs through the Townshend State Forest before emptying into the West River, will now be named after James and Susanna Huzzy.
